


against the dying of the light

by wastrelwoods



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Final Resting Place, M/M, Tearful last-minute confessions of love, bc one dramatic angst trope is good but do you know what's better? a different dramatic angst trope, everyone around me: what the fuck??! no. dont do that, me listenin to this ep again: hey what if--, y'all know me and my gay love and loyalty kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 09:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11483985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: "Dammit, Nureyev, get out! Go!"He reaches out with one hand to brace himself on the wall, and staggers back over the threshold just as Juno glances back over his shoulder and presses the button to close the airlock. The doors slide shut behind him so quickly that he feels the vibration of it rattle up his spine. "Not without you."





	against the dying of the light

**Author's Note:**

> it's like......final resting place au where peter passes a very important perception check partway through. its like the orestes and pylades chapter of les miserables. its not exactly hurt comfort so much as a different flavor of hurt. it's not really a fix-it, it's the au that penumbra deserves, but not the one it needs right now

"Head for the door, I'll cover you."

It's a good plan. Certainly not the kind that Peter could have dreamed up, bruised and aching and wanting nothing more than to turn and run as far as he can, as fast as he can. A neat little solution, too, to destroy both Miasma and the Egg in one fell swoop.

Except. 

There's something in Juno's face that unsettles him. A rigid set to his jaw. Or perhaps it's the blood painted down the side of his face that Peter cannot tear his gaze away from. "Juno--"

"Now!" Juno barks, and Peter inhales sharply. This time he spends hesitating is time they do not have. All he can do is listen, and trust Juno, and do as he says. 

And he does trust Juno, of course. 

Only, perhaps, not with this. 

"Dammit, Nureyev, get out! Go!"

Peter's feet stumble backwards instinctively, carrying him almost past the open steel doors of the airlock, and another of Miasma's limbs thrashes toward him, pale in the darkness of the chamber, like lightning made solid. Juno swings the blaster around with one hand and fires a volley of frantic shots. Sloppy, and not at all accurate. His gun hand is shaking.

His other hand is drifting, in the corner of Peter's vision, back to the panel. But he's not following Nureyev through the door, not yet. 

Clear thought does not come as easily as Peter would prefer, dulled by pain and panic, but he understands this. He knows Juno far too well by now not to recognize exactly what this means. 

It doesn't quite surprise Peter that he'd managed to overlook this one crucial detail of Juno's plan. It's not in his nature to contemplate self-sacrifice. 

He reaches out with one hand to brace himself on the wall, and staggers back over the threshold just as Juno glances back over his shoulder and presses the button to close the airlock. The doors slide shut behind him so quickly that he feels the vibration of it rattle up his spine. "Not without you," Peter says, his mouth dry as bone. 

Juno's face twists up in shock, then in anger. "What the hell are you doing." Each word spat out like a high-impact laser. 

"If we lock Miasma in and run," Peter deduces, still allowing the wall to take most of his weight as Juno fires off another volley to keep Miasma at bay. "There's no one to stop her from accessing the panel. She can still send the Egg up to the planet's surface, and set it off." His legs are trembling from the ache of remaining upright, as he slides along the wall back to the panel. Back towards Juno, who's still firing off stray rounds like he doesn't care what they hit, so long as he can stay on his feet long enough to pull the trigger one more time. 

His back is turned to Peter, but just enough of his profile is visible to show the way he grits his teeth and takes a shuddering breath, in and out. Not agreeing with Peter, but not denying him, either. "Should leave while you still can," he grunts, head dipping low between his shoulders. 

"If you think I'm going to disappear now--" One of Miasma's appendages makes a grab for the panel, undaunted by the laser fire. There's still a bloodied knife open in Nureyev's hand, though not much feeling left in his fingers. He swings, hits, stumbles into Juno's side with the recoil of the force it takes to tug the blade back out. On the platform, a dozen feet away and several yards above their heads, the strange glowing characters on the surface of the Egg drop a digit. "And besides, I suspect it may be too late for that." 

He wraps an arm around Juno to keep upright. Juno breathes in and out again, the air rattling in his chest and hissing between clenched teeth. "You goddamn idiot," he hisses, and shreds Miasma's face apart so thoroughly that she drops to the ground, knocking over a crate full of white nutrient capsules that scatter over the floor at their feet. 

"It seems we have a quiet moment to ourselves," Peter mumbles into his neck. "Small mercies." 

His hand falls to his side, grip on the blaster still shaky and too loose. His blood is all over his face, on Peter's hands, matted in his hair and drying tacky on his shirt. "Damn you, Nureyev, I'm not gonna let you die here," he says, but he sounds like he's already been beaten. 

"Oh? You'd prefer to let me observe your brave, heroic sacrifice from the other side of that door?" 

Juno flinches with his whole body. "This is the way it's gotta be. It's not about me trying to be some selfless--"

"No, you're quite selfish about it, aren't you?" Peter says, with a laugh that rings hollow in his own ears. "Not considering for a moment that my life is my own, to do with as I see fit, and--"

"Then you should be out there right now, living it." His hand reaches up to grip onto Peter's forearm, knuckles white. He turns his head so that his one bright eye meets Peter's, and speaks like the words are being torn out of him. "Don't be a moron, alright, Nureyev? If…if only one of us is gonna survive this thing, it should be you, okay?" 

Peter pulls him closer, and shakes his head mutely. The air is close and coppery and deceptively still. 

This whole business is quite out of character for him. Ordinarily Peter would have no qualms about vanishing into thin air and forgetting the bodies he'd left behind. 

People die everywhere, every day. Heroically, sometimes, but they die all the same. They die, and people forget them, and the universe keeps on turning, vast and beautiful and bright. What is the flame of a single life snuffed out, compared to that? 

But somehow, Peter thinks the galaxy will be a much darker place without Juno's light to illuminate it. Just one man, but he burns so impossibly bright. 

"I won't leave you, Juno," he vows, voice breaking on the words.

A furious roar erupts from Miasma as she struggles to her feet, only for Juno to put another hole through her head and knock her back again. "Yeah. I was worried you might say something like that," he breathes, but he leans back into Peter's chest and lets his eye fall shut. The numbers on the Egg are flashing by too fast to track. Counting down the seconds until the end. 

Peter feels lightheaded with the knowledge that after more than thirty years of running, that end is finally catching up to him. 

"You know what, Nureyev?" Juno's voice is strangely composed, like a man drifting off to sleep after a long day. "Maybe I am a selfish bastard, because I--I can't help feeling lucky you're here. With me. Always figured I was going to die alone." 

"In a cold ditch, or a warm one?" Peter asks, and Juno laughs quietly, the sound trapped in his throat. He can't seem to stop his hands trembling. "Well, for my part," he admits, measuring the pace of his heart by the frantic shuddering of his chest, "I think I could be quite content to die here by your side, Juno Steel."

His eye drifts half-open again to stare softly up at Peter's face, smiling in a way that's likely meant to be bravado but turns small and sad instead. "I don't deserve that." His voice is distant, like he's talking to himself and simply forgot Peter was in earshot. "You trusting me, giving me your name. Coming back for me and staying." He reaches up and brushes the fingers of his free hand along the side of Peter's face. "But I've loved it, you know. Every second. Wish it could have gone on forever, just the two of us bouncing from star to star. I always wished I'd taken you up on that offer. Would have been fun." 

Peter turns to press his lips against the palm of Juno's hand, and shudders again. "It has been quite the adventure, hasn't it?" 

Out of the corner of his vision he can see Miasma rising to her feet, a thousand cold limbs whipping around her like the spiral arms of a galaxy. Peter takes as deep a breath as his bruised ribs will allow, and steps away, brandishing his knife. Juno raises the blaster again, still looking at Peter like he means to memorize all the details of his face. "Hey, Nureyev?" he says, lightly. "Do me a favor, and try not to die, okay?"

Peter manages something ghastly that might resemble a smile. "If you promise me the same, Juno, I will certainly do my best." 

"That bomb," Miasma growls, her mouth still hanging ajar as her jaw struggles to reform itself, "Will tear every cell in your bodies to shreds. It is the punctuation mark on life. There will be nothing left to survive." 

"Then why not disable it?" Juno counters, loading a new clip into the blaster and shooting at a limb that had wandered too close to the door panel. 

"It can't be disabled," Miasma says, and Juno nods like he'd expected nothing less. Peter's heart seizes and skips a beat, flooded with sudden despair. He'd been holding out hope, that just maybe…but it hardly matters now. The numbers drop another digit. "Open that door, Juno Steel!" she howls, "Or it will rip us all apart. It will chew through you, atom by atom, and I can promise you it will not be pleasant." 

"Counting on it," Juno grunts, and Peter dives forward to slice at a tentacle that was flying for his right side. Miasma shrieks. 

"You can't do this! You can't stop me! I can't die!" One of the limbs crashes against Peter's arm hard enough to knock the knife out of his trembling fingers. 

The last digit changes twice more, and freezes, and goes dark. "Guess we'll find out," Juno says, his voice perfectly devoid of emotion. Miasma turns and sees the first crack spreading across the shell of the Egg, and screams. 

Juno's arm falls limp at his side, and the blaster drops from his hand. It must make a sound as it collides with the floor, but Peter cannot register it above the ringing in his ears. Another crack in the shell, and beyond that a bright light, and a growing hum. 

It's impossible to look away. Another crack, and another, spreading outwards like a spiderweb. Peter reaches down to catch Juno's hand and twine their fingers together, holding on as tight as he can. It's something solid in a world that feels like it's splintering apart. The air buzzes with an ominous energy. The light grows steadily brighter. He can feel Juno's pulse where their palms are pressed together. 

And then, with a blinding flash, the Egg hatches. 

 

 

It's loud. Impossibly loud, like the roar of a train or the pounding of his heart in his chest. The droning hum he can feel in every cell of his body at once, the distant sound of screaming, and under it all the quick, heavy beating of his pulse. 

Strangely enough, it doesn't hurt, either. It simply feels like…like everything, and nothing. 

And then, as swiftly as it began, it recedes, until there is nothing left but silence.

 

 

\--silence, and the low, steady, impossible thrum of his heartbeat. 

 

Peter breathes in and out again, slowly, testing that he still can. 

 

He opens his eyes. 

 

Beside him, Juno stands like a statue, staring blankly out across the sea of splintered crates and scattered pills and bloodstains. His hand is perfectly still in Nureyev's, but there's a thin pulse fluttering through his wrist, too. 

Miasma is gone. 

The Egg on its dais is whole again, as though it had never hatched at all. 

Peter's tongue twists in on itself when he tries to speak, and all he can manage is to sway on his feet and sink slowly to his knees as his legs refuse to bear his weight a moment longer. Juno sinks down beside him, his face still with shock. 

They sit in silence for a long moment, staring at the ground, fingers still intertwined, until eventually Peter manages a slightly crazed giggle. 

Juno stares at him, uncomprehending, his brows drawn together, his jaw slack. 

The giggle turns to full-blown laughter, rattling through his chest and blurring his vision with tears of disbelieving, exhausted relief. Peter drops Juno's hand and topples forward onto him, wraps his arms around him and buries his face in Juno's neck, smothering his laughter against his skin. Every part of his body is trembling wildly, entirely beyond his control. 

Juno's arms wrap around him in turn, loosely at first and then tight and solid and real, like he's afraid to feel Peter slip away if he can't pull him close enough. "You're alive," he mumbles.

"We're alive," he agrees, the words bubbling up out of his chest like a geyser. 

The breath rushes out of Juno all at once. "But that doesn't make any sense," he argues, voice wavering. "Miasma's dead, how the hell aren't we--"

A spark of fondness alights in Peter's chest. Pulled back from the brink of death, and all he can think about is another mystery to be solved. He muffles another laugh into the bloodstained fabric of Juno's shirt. "You are impossible," he murmurs, and presses a kiss to the sunken line of his jaw.

Juno stops, looks down at Peter, and stills. "Nureyev, what are you--"

He huffs. "I should have thought that would be obvious." 

Juno growls in frustration. "Don't--" 

Peter sits up, "As I have quite recently been reminded," he ventures, brushing some of the flaking blood from Juno's cheek with his thumb. "Life is short. And I think…if you'll have me…you and I ought to make the most of it." He brushes his lips against Juno's, just once, gently. Tentatively. "Together." 

"Yeah," Juno agrees, a little distantly, his eye still searching Nureyev's face. "Okay. Yeah. That sounds…nice."

Peter can't help the grin that spreads across his face as he leans in to kiss Juno again, soft and slow and brimming with promise. "I'm very glad to hear it, Juno."

**Author's Note:**

> pls, spare me, a simple angst farmer trying to grow his crops strong n healthy n sad. i know i make you angry when i do this.......but it's who i AM, DAD


End file.
